Two ETA activists captured after Madrid attack

Jan 9, 2007, 13:16 GMT

Madrid - French police Tuesday captured two suspected activists of the armed Basque separatist group ETA, 10 days after it ended an incipient peace process by planting a car bomb at Madrid airport, the Spanish Interior Ministry said.

The two were arrested as they were walking in the centre of Ascain in southern France. It is believed that one of the two could have links with the Madrid attack.

A French source close to the investigation confirmed the arrests, which were made in collaboration with Spanish police.

One of the detainees was identified as Asier Larrinaga Rodriguez. He was thought to have links with an explosives cache discovered in the Basque locality of Amorebieta one week before the Madrid bombing, which killed two Ecuadorian immigrants.

Larrinaga was also suspected of involvement with about 180 kilos of abandoned explosives found in Atxondo after the attack.

It was thought possible Larrinaga had fled to France after the discovery of the Amorebieta cache, leaving the other set of explosives behind.

The ETA cell which handled the Amorebieta and Atxondo explosives could be the same that staged the Madrid attack, news reports quoted police sources as saying.

The other detainee was Garikoitz Etxebarria Goikotxea, who had been sentenced for belonging to a pro-ETA youth organization. Police seized a pistol from the detainees, who did not resist arrest.

Police were searching for two suspected accomplices of Larrinaga and Etxebarria.

The Madrid bombing prompted the government to break off contacts with ETA, which is blamed for more than 800 killings since 1968.

Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba meanwhile launched a round of talks with parliamentary parties in an attempt to rally them behind the government after the end of the peace process.

Rubalcaba started the round with a meeting with Eduardo Zaplana of the conservative People's Party (PP), whose leader Mariano Rajoy had failed to find common ground with Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero on Monday.

Rajoy urged the Socialists to resume a hard line against ETA and to renew their 2000 anti-terrorism pact with the PP.

The government, however, was seeking a wider pact which would also include parties such as the Basque region's governing Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) in an attempt to isolate ETA's outlawed political wing Batasuna.

Zapatero was expected to inform parliament about his anti- terrorism policy in a special session on Monday.